# Teesside, County Durham and North Yorkshire

URL: https://performanceandprestige.co.uk/car-hire/teesside

Performance & Prestige has no depot, branch or rental counter in Teesside and holds no premises there. Every lease is delivered to an address you choose and collected from it afterwards.

Teesside is a compact, wealthy pocket of the north east with open moor on one side of it and a fast dual carriageway down the middle, and it is badly served by anyone expecting you to travel to a forecourt. We deliver to Yarm, Eaglescliffe, Hartburn and Ingleby Barwick, to the gated houses at Wynyard, to Hutton Rudby, Great Ayton, Stokesley and Nunthorpe, and across to Darlington, Hurworth and the villages down the Tees. At the end of the term we collect from wherever suits you. The two things that decide how a handover goes here are the cobbled setts on Yarm High Street and whether the address sits behind a gatehouse, and both are easily dealt with in advance. We hold no premises on Teesside, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to hand back over a counter.

Typical delivery: The road side of this is simple, because the A19 and the A66 put nearly every address within easy reach of a dual carriageway. What actually sets the window is the address. A gated estate needs a name lodged and the right entrance named. A village street in Hutton Rudby or Great Ayton needs somewhere the car can legally and safely stand. A moor-edge house needs the last mile described. Weather on the high ground counts in winter. The window comes from a person who has checked those, agreed with you before anything is fixed.

Yarm is the one that catches people out. The High Street is broad and handsome and surfaced in stone setts, with angled parking down both sides and a camber that is unkind to anything with a low front coming off a ramp at an angle. The streets behind it are narrow and busy in the evening. So we hand over on flatter ground nearby rather than in the middle of it. Wynyard and the other gated developments are the opposite case: quiet, private, and entirely straightforward provided the gatehouse is expecting us. Out at the moor edge, tell us if the approach is a farm track, because that changes the plan rather than the answer.

Postcode areas covered: TS, DL.

## Which roads climb onto the North York Moors from here?

Three of the best in the north start within a short run of the Tees. The A171 over Birk Brow towards Whitby is the fast one, open and exposed across the top. The B1257 from Stokesley to Helmsley climbs Clay Bank and then runs along the moor edge with genuinely long views and some tight, unsighted bends. Rosedale Chimney Bank is the famous one, and it is severe enough, with a hairpin partway up, that it is no place at all for a long low car. All three cross unfenced moor where sheep treat the road as part of the grazing.

## Is the A66 west a good road or a difficult one?

Both, depending entirely on the day. It is the quickest way from Teesside to the Pennines and the Lakes, and it crosses high, exposed ground where snow, standing water and crosswind restrictions arrive earlier and last longer than on the roads either side of it. It also alternates between dual and single carriageway with traffic crossing and turning between the two. In settled weather it is a fine road and a genuinely useful one. In a bad week it is the first thing to close, so it is worth checking its status on the morning rather than assuming.

## Is there a clean air charge on Teesside?

There is no charging zone here. The nearest scheme is on Tyneside, and that one is aimed at taxis, buses, coaches, vans and lorries rather than private cars, which puts both in a different category from Birmingham or Bristol. That does not make a longer trip charge-free by default, because other cities run their own schemes on their own rules and boundaries. We check the standing of the exact vehicle against the schemes on your route before you commit, and tell you plainly which charges sit with us and which are billed on to you.

## What is the coast like for a car of this kind?

Worth seeing and worth parking sensibly. Saltburn's bank down to the pier is steep and narrow, with limited parking at the bottom and a great deal of it at the top. Whitby's old town is cobbled, tight and effectively closed to anything wide. Redcar's front is exposed and takes salt air straight off the sea, and blown sand collects along the coast road after a windy week and behaves like loose chippings. The answer everywhere along here is the same: park on made ground above the town and walk the last part.

## What does a gated estate handover involve?

Preparation rather than difficulty. We need your name with the gatehouse, the entrance you use, and a line about the drive itself, because several of the houses here have deep gravel and a raised apron at the gate that a front splitter finds before you do. Once inside, the whole handover happens on your own drive with nothing visible from a public road, which is the most discreet arrangement we do. Estate roads also carry speed tables, and those are taken square and slowly in anything low rather than at the angle most drivers take them.

## How far around Teesside does the same run reach?

Middlesbrough, Stockton, Thornaby, Billingham, Guisborough, Marske and Saltburn on one side; Darlington, Hurworth, Sedgefield, Durham, Barnard Castle and Richmond on the other; and the North Yorkshire villages as far as Northallerton and Thirsk. Teesside International sits between Darlington and Yarm, so a terminal handover fits inside the same booking if you are flying in or out. Delivery here and collection in Newcastle, Leeds or the Dales is one arrangement rather than two, quoted against both addresses before anything is agreed.

*Pre-launch note: the driver criteria, deposits, excesses and mileage allowances quoted here are read from Performance & Prestige's own catalogue data, which is still being confirmed with the owner and the insurer. Read them as the shape of the figures rather than as a quotation. What binds is your written quote and your agreement.*